a season of fragments

Pieces of time connected by strands of musts, shoulds, and ought to’s.

Creating meaning from scattered moments, half hours, and hours takes strength and purpose and vision. It’s too, too easy to just languish in the not enough time to do.

I’m time-challenged.

Always ten, fifteen, thirty minutes late. I stretch the time to fit my need, or want.

Projects can span days, months, years. Put away for seasons or until seasons, finishing is elusive.

But lately, I’ve been challenged.

Challenged to love and really live in the pieces of time I would normally pass, believing them too small:

15 minutes of contemplative prayer,

1 hour of power to get jobs done,** and

20 minutes to write.

To appreciate the fragments and to piece them together.

To use what I have wisely and not ask for more.

* * * * *

My sister, Tamara Rice, is a wonderful writer in a season of work on other writers’ words. She’s been an editor for almost 20 years and these days, is doing it full time while being mom and wife and friend and sister.

We both took time this summer to do as many things with our kids as possible. We are counting summers with children at home now. And there aren’t as many as we’d like. Our babies are twelve years old.

Tamara wrote a piece in a fragment of time at the end of the summer, and I asked if I could share it here while I’m talking about Live the Season. Here’s an excerpt:

Since my children got out of school 10 weeks ago I have posted precisely four times, and two of them should barely count as blog posts, since one was a photograph with a single sentence and the other was a 200-word writing exercise.

Maybe this shouldn’t count either.

You see, I have set my alarm for 20 minutes—yes, exactly 20—and have promised my daughter that when my alarm goes off I will hit publish and get back to our day, because she is more important than filling the blogosphere with more words and opinions or even stories and feelings.

Oh, my two daughters convict me of my own lack of attention to my blog. It doesn’t get better when all the kids leave home. Our lives are still too busy. And, there is so much yet to do and enjoy as the stove timer of life winds down. I find editing so all-consuming that I have little juice left with which to write, but I must. Bits and pieces–fragments–indeed. Someday I need to gather them all together into one tome . . . before the tomb.

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Deb & Dave

Welcome

I'm Deb, and this is my husband, Dave.
I write for a living & he's been a lot of things -- but now he's a pastor (the associate kind). We've got four grown and nearly grown kids and live in a small town in Washington State.

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